The Journeys of Trees

A Story about Forests, People, and the Future

By: Zach St. George

Narrated by: Daniel Henning

Forests are restless. Any time a tree dies or a new one sprouts, the forest that includes it has shifted. When new trees sprout in the same direction, the whole forest begins to migrate, sometimes at astonishing rates. Today, however, an array of obstacles - humans felling trees by the billions, invasive pests transported through global trade - threaten to overwhelm these vital movements. Worst of all, the climate is changing faster than ever before, and forests are struggling to keep up.

A deft blend of science reporting and travel writing, The Journeys of Trees explores the evolving movements of forests by focusing on five trees: giant sequoia, ash, black spruce, Florida torreya, and Monterey pine. Journalist Zach St. George visits these trees in forests across continents, finding sequoias losing their needles in California, fossil records showing the paths of ancient forests in Alaska, domesticated pines in New Zealand, and tender new sprouts of blight-resistant American chestnuts in New Hampshire. Everywhere he goes, St. George meets lively people on conservation's front lines, from an ecologist studying droughts to an evolutionary evangelist with plans to save a dying species. He treks through the woods with activists, biologists, and foresters, each with their own role to play in the fight for the uncertain future of our environment.

©2020 Zach St. George (P)2020 HighBridge, a division of Recorded Books

The Journey of the Trees.

The book is pretty good. Certainly, it creates an awareness and appreciation of the gift of nature - the trees, how they grow, interact, and how precious they are to our wellbeing, climate, and even the economy. I learned a few interesting things and have more respect for the trees now. I wish the narration was closed captioned and had images of the tress. :)

Good reframing of the life of forests

The book itself is solidly written, accessable, and covers a hugely neglected aspect of one of the more constructive things we homo sapiens could be doing to adapt to climate change. Well worth the listen, but you'll have to forgive the narrator for a couple of repeated pet-peeve provoking miswordings/mispronunciations, most notably, a few instances of "climactic" in place of "climatic" and for some reason pronouncing "deciduous" as "decid-ee-ous".